#154 Charles Schulz (Charlie Brown)

What I learned from reading My Life with Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz.  ---- [0:24] Beginning with the first strip published on October 2nd, 1950, until the last published on Sunday, February 13th, 2000, the day after his death, Schultz wrote, penciled, inked, and lettered by hand every single one of the daily and Sunday strips to leave his studio, 17,897 in all for an almost fifty-year run.  [4:08] If there were one bit of advice I could give to a young person, it would be to do at least one task well. Do what you do on a high plain.  [5:54] Slow consistent growth over a long period of time: Year  / # of newspapers1950     71952    401958    3551971     11001975    14801984    2000  [12:00] There are certain seasons in our lives that each of us can recall, and there are others that disappear from our memories, like the melting snow.  [14:05] I used my spare time to work on my own cartoons. I tried to never let a week go by without having something in the mail working for me.  [21:03] You don’t work all of your life to do something so you don’t have to do it.  [22:09] On where ideas come from: Most comic strip ideas are like that. They come from sitting in a room alone and drawing seven days a week, as I’ve done for 40 years.  [25:03] When he is 73: People come up to me and say: “Are you still drawing the strip?” I want to say to them, “Good grief—who else in the world do you think is drawing it?” I would never let anybody take over. And I have it in my contract that if I die, then my strip dies.  [30:15] At the point he is writing this he is making $30 to $40 million a year. The total earning of Peanuts is well over $1 billion.  [32:37] But as the year went by, I could almost say that drawing a comic strip for me became a lot like a religion. Because it helps me survive from day to day. I always have this to fall back upon. When everything seems hopeless I know I can come to the studio and think: Here’s where I’m at home. This is where I belong —in this room, dr